Why has the United States experienced so many crippling financial crises, along with other sorts of monetary and financial troubles, throughout its history? The popular answer: U.S. banks have long been poorly regulated, subjecting the economy to the whims of selfish interest, which must be tempered by more government regulation and centralization.

In Money: Free and Unfree George Selgin turns this conventional wisdom on its head. In essays covering U.S. monetary policy since before the Civil War, he painstakingly traces financial disorder to its source: misguided government regulation, dispelling the myth of the Federal Reserve as a bulwark of stability.